Richard Burden: Has the International Development Secretary joined the Foreign Secretary and, curiously, the Education Secretary in meeting Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman during his visit to the UK? Irrespective of whether he meets him, will the right hon. Gentleman transmit to the Israeli Foreign Minister the concerns of the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Co-ordinator, who visited the west bank last week and said:
	“I am extremely concerned about the humanitarian impact of demolitions and displacement on Palestinian families. Such actions cause great human suffering, run counter to international law and must be brought to a halt.”?

Chris Kelly: I welcome the Department’s commitment to doubling the provision of water and sanitation so that it reaches 60 million people, but will he assure me that sufficient priority is now being given to sanitation? Too often in the past, priority has been given solely to the provision of clean water.

Gregg McClymont: Whether the Government plans to spend 0.7% of gross national income on official development assistance by 2013.

Andrew Mitchell: The whole House will be grateful to Sir John Major for chairing the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust. The British Government have put in £50 million to the match fund for these projects. On the Commonwealth, I can tell my hon. Friend that under the previous Government, support for it declined from some 45% of our development budget to 35%, whereas under this Government, over five years, it will increase to 55%.

Edward Miliband: The Prime Minister did not answer the question about the proposal—[ Interruption. ] No, he did not answer the question. Mr Beecroft made a proposal that employers should be able to fire their employees at will. The people sitting behind the Prime Minister think that the Beecroft proposal is a great report—that it is the bee’s knees—and they support the proposal. The people over there think it is a bonkers proposal and the Business Secretary has been going around saying that. We just want to know where the Prime Minister stands. Who does he agree with?

David Cameron: The right hon. Gentleman might, while he is on his feet, welcome the fact that unemployment is falling, inflation is falling, and this Government have
	cut the deficit by 25%. Let me explain to him what the Government and the Business Secretary are doing. We are cutting regulation by £3 billion, we are scrapping 1,500 regulations, we are looking at introducing fees for employment tribunals. We are taking all these steps, which led last year to the greatest number of small business start-ups in the country’s history. Of course, the right hon. Gentleman cannot support any changes to employment regulation because he is in the pocket of the trade unions.

David Cameron: I know that the hon. Lady speaks with a lot of personal experience, having set up a project in Oxfordshire, the county I represent, that has had a major impact. I think that her work does her huge credit. The truth is that all the studies show that real disadvantage for children kicks in right from the moment they are born if they do not get the love, support and help they need. That is why the projects she is talking about, along with the expansion of the health visitors scheme—4,200 extra health visitors—which can make a real difference, are so important. I will also point out the measure we took last week to make sure that new parents get proper contact with and information from their midwife both before and after their child is born so that we do everything to remove that disadvantage in the early months and years.

David Cameron: I very much remember visiting GEC Alsthom when I contested my hon. Friend’s constituency rather unsuccessfully in 1997, but what is absolutely essential for such manufacturing, engineering and technology-based businesses are the support that we are giving to apprenticeships, whereby we achieved more than 450,000 apprenticeship starts last year; the lower rate of corporation tax; and the links between our universities and the new catapult centres in order to ensure that technology goes into our businesses and makes them world-beating. If we look not just at our exports overall, which were up 12% last year, but at exports to India, China and fast-growing markets, we find that they are up 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%.

Keith Vaz: Last week, it was revealed that officials at the UK Border Agency received bonuses of £3.5 million. Given the horrendous queues at our airports, the fact that 100,000 files have now been archived by the UKBA, and the fact in the past six months 185 people have absconded having been given limited leave to remain, does the Prime Minister agree that in future we should reward success, not failure?

David Cameron: My hon. Friend makes a good point. I notice that the Labour party did not want to go anywhere near the International Monetary Fund today. Perhaps that is because of something else that its director said yesterday: “You have to compare” the British deficit situation
	“against other countries which experienced severe deficit numbers, did not take action right away and are now facing very, very stressful financing terms that is putting their situation in jeopardy”.
	We would have been in jeopardy if we had not taken the brave steps that we took, and very necessary they were too.

David Cameron: Five minutes and absolutely no plan! The Leader of the Opposition had nothing positive to say. It was a good joke about Sarkozy, but let me say this: we all have our faults, but I would rather have a reputation for being loyal to my friends than for knifing my brother.
	The right hon. Gentleman started with NATO and asked some serious questions, so let me give him some serious answers. He asked for a clear indication about the draw-down. We will go down to 9,000 troops by the end of this year. Clearly, we need to set out a pathway between now and the end of 2014. I want it to be based on the conditions on the ground and on how well the transition is going in the three provinces for which we are responsible. Obviously, I will keep the House updated on that. We do not want a great cliff edge at the end.
	The right hon. Gentleman asked what would be left at the end of 2014. We have made a clear decision on this. President Karzai asked us to provide an officer training college in Afghanistan and we will be doing that. We have the assistance of the Australians and the
	New Zealanders on that, and we hope that others will be joining in. That is the baseline of our commitment, but clearly we will listen to any other requests. The right hon. Gentleman asked whether it would be a NATO-led operation in terms of training: yes it will, but there will not be NATO combat operations after 2014.
	The right hon. Gentleman asked about the relationship with Pakistan and about the vital issue of the ground lines of communication—the so-called GLOCs. It is essential that they are reopened. I spoke to Prime Minister Gilani about this when he visited the UK a week or so ago, and I spoke to President Zidari at the conference. I am confident that progress will be made but, frankly, it needs to be made more rapidly than is currently the case.
	The right hon. Gentleman asked about the political challenge, and he is right about that. I have said all along that, alongside the military surge, we need a political surge. We are working very hard with the Afghans and the Pakistanis to deliver that. We have made a very clear offer to the Taliban that if they lay down their weapons and join a political process, that process will be open to them. But we have to be prepared for the political process not advancing as far as we would like, and that is why we must ensure that the build-up of the Afghan national security forces goes according to plan so that we can hand over in good order, as I believe we will.
	I welcome what the right hon. Gentleman said about Syria and Burma. On President Hollande, let me make this point. President Hollande said something that I think the right hon. Gentleman should perhaps adapt slightly, then repeat. He said:
	“The national debt is the enemy of the left and of France.”
	We have never heard the right hon. Gentleman say anything as clear as that before. Let us look at what President Hollande is doing. When he was asked how he would stimulate growth, he said:
	“The means cannot be extra public spending, since we want to rein it in”.
	The right hon. Gentleman asked about our approach on growth. We agree with the Italian Prime Minister that we need structural reform in Europe. We agree with the French President that we need a more active monetary policy in Europe. We agree with the German Chancellor that deficit reduction is vital in getting interest rates down. The problem is that Europe has not had all three, but we support all three of those things.
	Finally, I would just say to the right hon. Gentleman that nobody I can find in Europe, not even the left-wing party in Greece, backs his idea of putting an extra £200 billion of borrowing into the British economy. That is the Labour policy. It would put up interest rates, it would wreck our economy and it would wreck our prospects—which is exactly what Labour did in office.

Bob Ainsworth: The Prime Minister talks about the continued importance of NATO and about some of the things that have been agreed, but the agreed changes are largely peripheral and the need for reform is profound. Is there not a danger that the understandable focus on the economic crisis is sucking the life of out of the need for reform in NATO? Will he focus on that? Notwithstanding the understandable needs of the economy, will the Prime Minister make sure that the change programme that is so badly needed to get decent interoperability within NATO does not lose its momentum?

David Cameron: One of the things the UK did in the strategic defence review was to invest some of the savings made—from memory, I think it was £900 million—into a cyber-defence programme. That is being co-ordinated
	with GCHQ, but also involves the private sector. We hope to work with other NATO members on that capability to make sure that we share best experience and endeavours, and that should lead to savings for us and for others.

David Cameron: Obviously, we are not a participant in the eurozone bail-out of Greece. We are supporting Greece through the IMF, however. The hon. Gentleman must consider this point: other European and eurozone countries, some of whom are not particularly rich themselves, have had a series of agreements with Greece about what needs to be done and what money will be put in, and effectively he is asking them to go back repeatedly to their own Parliaments and say, “Well, I promised I wouldn’t ask for any more for Greece, but here I am again asking for more.” That is very challenging for them. As I have said, in the end it will be for the Greek people to decide, in their election, whether they want stay in the euro and keep to the undertakings they have given, or whether they want to choose a different path. We in this country must be clear that we should support all and any contingency plans to make sure that either scenario can be safely delivered.

Hugh Bayley: At a time when defence budgets are constrained right the way across the alliance, is it not important for NATO itself to demonstrate, in the same way as its member states, that every pound it spends is well spent? Will the UK therefore support proposals being considered by the NATO secretariat to ensure that the external audit service for NATO is entirely independent of NATO, that accounts are published in a timely fashion—say, within six months of the year-end—and that they are available for parliamentarians in this and other Parliaments in NATO states to scrutinise, in the same that we scrutinise our own defence expenditures?

David Cameron: My hon. Friend, who has great knowledge of these things, makes a series of sensible suggestions and we should look carefully at them. Let
	me again commend Secretary-General Rasmussen for what he has done in reforming the huge number of command posts and headquarters posts in NATO. I suspect that there is more to be done on that front, as well.

Dan Jarvis: Our country has invested a lot in Afghanistan—a lot of sacrifice and a lot of resource. So, along with many others, I am increasingly concerned at the lack of progress in the critical issues of politics and governance in Afghanistan, which, by nearly all accounts, are getting worse, not better. Will the Prime Minister therefore pledge to re-energise this process in order to give Afghanistan the best chance of surviving as an entity post-2014, ensuring that our efforts and sacrifice our not wasted?

Alan Campbell: It is now clear that some of the worst cases take place in local authorities such as North Tyneside. Can the Chief Secretary not do more to direct HMRC to not only deal with these abuses, but seek redress?

Danny Alexander: I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s remarks about the BBC, which is useful information for the House to have before it. I say to him in all seriousness that the rules relating to this sort of case—the IR35 rules—were put in place by the previous Government, and we are seeking to strengthen them through the consultation we have today. The coalition Government have done more than many previous Governments to take action on dealing with tax avoidance and evasion across the board, because it is vital in a time of austerity that everyone pays their fair share, and that is what are doing. Frankly, it is what the Government of whom he was a part did not do.

Nigel Dodds: The Minister said that the United Kingdom is one of the few countries that does not have individual registration. Of course, we have had that in Northern Ireland for some 10 years. I think it has been a success, and I therefore warmly welcome his proposals. However, it has led to a drop in the number of people registered, partly for the reasons that he outlined—for example, because some people should not be on the register in the first place. Will he take on board the lesson that we learned in Northern Ireland, which was that resources needed to put into the Electoral Office to ensure that young people, in particular, got signed up to the register?

Gordon Birtwistle: I welcome this proposal, because during the recent elections in Burnley there were reports of wholesale fraud taking place on an industrial scale in terms of personation and fake postal votes. Is the Minister considering proposals to require photo identification when people turn up to vote to cut out the appalling growth in personation that is taking place in some polling stations? [ Interruption . ]

Chris Ruane: I thank the Minister very much for giving way.
	On the private sector’s knowledge of electoral registration, two and a half years ago, I was informed by Experian that 6.5 million people were missing from the register. When I raised that with the Electoral Commission, it said that the figure was 3.5 million. Six months ago, the Electoral Commission said that, having done its research, the figure was 6 million. The private sector has excellent databases, which we should be utilising to maximise registration.

Siobhain McDonagh: Under clause 4, the procedure for the canvass will change. At the moment, if the ERO or their canvasser knocks on a door and finds somebody who is not registered, they fill the form in there and then. Clause 4 states that that can no longer happen, and that the canvasser can only take people’s names and addresses and then send a form to them. Surely the point is that canvassers knock on doors because people have not filled in their forms without assistance.

Mark Harper: We do. The main impact on an individual who does not register to vote is the rather obvious one is that they lose their opportunity to vote and have their say in how their country is governed, but there are also some public policy reasons why we want people to register to vote. One reason is to ensure that there is a complete register for the purpose of boundary changes, and another is that the electoral register is used as the pool for jury service. We therefore want to ensure that it is as accurate as possible.
	My hon. Friend is right that is up to Members and to people involved in politics of all descriptions to motivate people to register to vote and then use their vote. The use of the vote will, of course, remain sanction-free. It will be entirely up to people whether they use their vote.

Mark Harper: I would have made this point to the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David), had he shown the generosity of spirit that I did. Given his complaints about the diminishing register and the risks involved, would my hon. Friend like to consider why the Electoral Commission’s research showed that in 2000, under the previous Government, 3 million people were missing from the electoral register and that by 2010, just after they had left office, the figure had risen to 6 million? If there is a party in the House that has shown itself to be
	a past master at driving people off the electoral register, it is not the party on this side of the House; it is the party opposite.

Stewart Jackson: The Minister makes an astute point. In 2001, the year in which the hon. Member for Caerphilly entered the House, the English electorate numbered 37.3 million. By the end of Labour’s second term, in 2005, the figure was 37.1 million. So Labour did not push up registration rates in an increasing population either.
	I take with a pinch of salt Labour’s protestations and faux outrage. We have argued for many years that overseas voters should also have the right to be registered, and that active steps should be take to achieve that. That point has also been made by the hon. Member for Caerphilly’s erstwhile right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane). However, that did not happen during the 13 years of the previous Government. Indeed, they more or less ignored service voters, despite many people from military constituencies saying that that was an outrageous and egregious oversight.

Stewart Jackson: We will not meander down the path of compulsory voting, which is a completely separate issue, and even the benign Deputy Speaker might rule me out of order if I did. I think it is better to persuade than to threaten and cajole people. That is why I am not particularly concerned one way or the other about the opt-out proposals. Had they remained in the Bill and not been amended, I would still have been happy to support it. We can argue about civil penalties, but I think amounts of £60, £80 or £100 send out a powerful enough message. After all, no one wants to get a parking ticket and be fined £60. We are talking about civic engagement with something that is important for the future of our country, and people understand that they should be part of it.
	An important corollary of the changes is the reduction in the potential for financial fraud. Essentially, the capacity to commit fraud is often given via a place on the electoral register. Figures produced over the last year or so in the Cabinet Office impact assessment by the Metropolitan Police Service and the National Fraud Initiative under the auspices of Operation Amberhill showed that of 29,000 information strands collated, 13,214—almost 46%—showed data matches with the
	electoral register that were fraudulent or counterfeit. In other words, the documents were often generated as a result of someone’s being on the electoral register, but were nevertheless fraudulent or counterfeit.
	The Minister made the simple point that ours is one of the few countries in the world that still operates a household registration system. The system is backward-looking, and it disfranchises people, particularly women, in communities in which the heads of households take full responsibility for women’s registration and postal vote. We should do something about that. We have a duty to ensure that those women’s votes are not being stolen by people who should not have access to them, because we have a universal franchise based on free and fair access to democracy for every man and every woman, which is what has put us here today.
	At present, only a person’s name, address and nationality need to be supplied for that person to appear on the electoral register. As the Minister made clear, this is one of the least robust systems in the world. Let me share with the House our experience in Peterborough. The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), who I know has been in the House for a long time, was very relaxed and insouciant, perhaps even complacent, about postal votes and the transfer to the individual electoral registration system. However, on 27 April the Peterborough Evening Telegraphreported that 16% of postal votes applied for in the central ward of Peterborough had been thrown out because they were fraudulent or forged.
	That is happening now, and it can be extrapolated to different communities and different wards in urban areas throughout the country, including Greater London. However, Members need not rely on me for speculation, because there have already been serious cases of electoral fraud involving postal votes in Slough, Pendle, Birmingham, West Yorkshire and, in particular, Peterborough. I shall say more about that later.

Andrew Stephenson: I shall come on to that exact point. There are a range of reasons why electoral fraud is not reported, the police do not have the resources to follow it up and the culprits are not brought to justice. Dozens of MPs have majorities in two or three figures and I have real concerns about the integrity of the ballot and its impact on recent elections as well as future ones.
	My Labour predecessor in this House, Gordon Prentice, was a vocal supporter of individual voter registration, particularly in April 2008 when he found out that our Lib Dem opponent for the last general election had 27 registered voters living in his house and a household
	of 44 people. I know that some Members will raise their eyebrows at that, and it was indeed an exceptional case, but I can assure hon. Members that in parts of my constituency it is not uncommon for seven, eight or more voters to be registered as living in a terraced house and no one makes any checks on that.
	We have also seen a sharp rise in the number of eastern European names appearing on the electoral roll, including those of Polish, Lithuanian or Czech citizens, but few are correctly marked as being unable to vote in UK parliamentary elections or referendums. During my time in Parliament, the names of virtually every illegal immigrant or illegal overstayer with whom I have dealt has appeared on the electoral roll. We know from Operation Amberhill, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), that almost half of all forged or counterfeit documents were positive matches on the electoral register.
	Surely all that would lead anyone to support individual electoral registration—and I do—but we need to ensure that it is properly scrutinised for fraud and that the returns are accurate. Scrutiny costs money and it will take a significant amount of time and effort to check people’s citizenship or residency status, in particular, so I welcome the Minister’s comments about extra money for the project.
	The nub of the issue of electoral fraud is on-demand postal voting, on which I believe, sadly, that the Bill should go further. It was introduced by the previous Government and my concerns are widely shared by a number of Members and by many of my constituents. In a letter to the Electoral Commission’s Jenny Watson last summer, Pendle borough council’s chief executive, Stephen Barnes, described how
	“allegations and perceptions of malpractice around”
	postal voting
	“are seriously undermining public confidence in the whole electoral process”,
	and expressed his own view that those concerns were fully justified, citing examples of probable malpractice and difficulties for the council in taking action.
	In a motion last year, Pendle borough council resolved that practices related to postal votes
	“affected the result of the election in some wards”.
	Just last week, five councillors in Pendle from the three main parties came together to form a taskforce on tackling postal vote fraud. One of those five, Conservative Councillor Linda Crossley, said:
	“People used to have to be really ill, virtually bed-ridden, to get a proxy or postal vote, now anybody can get a postal vote”.
	To put that into context and explain how it happens, I shall refer to one ward, Reedley, where the scale and impact of postal voting has been dramatic. I should declare an interest. Reedley was for many years a safe Conservative ward and perhaps it still is, without on-demand postal voting. Until last year all three councillors were Conservative; now there is only one. In 2010, 800 postal votes were issued in Reedley in an election in which 3,049 people voted. The Conservative candidate secured 49% of the vote and was easily elected. In 2011, Reedley saw a 25% increase in postal votes, and this year a further increase of almost 25%. In two years an extra 479 voters felt the need to vote by post. Virtually all were from the British Pakistani community and virtually all were signed up for postal votes by the Labour party.
	Not coincidentally, Labour was elected on both occasions. The Conservative vote did not collapse. The Labour victory was not on trend across the constituency. Nevertheless, in this ward its support rocketed.

Andrew Stephenson: Certainly not. I am suggesting that certain parties can abuse the system of on-demand postal voting, and all parties have a vested interest in signing up their voters for postal votes in order to increase the turnout of their voters. I believe that that can skew election results. A return to the old system, where voters had to have a reason to have a postal vote, is the way that we should go.
	I accept that in the Reedley ward it is theoretically possible that local support for Labour did sky-rocket. However, I have no doubt that the 45% increase in the Labour vote in 2011, against the backdrop of an 18% drop in turnout, was down to the huge increase in postal votes that year, as well as individual reports of party activists walking into polling stations with piles of up to 50 postal votes at a time. It is not so much that the numbers do not add up; rather, that they do. As the new council leader of Pendle, Councillor Joe Cooney, recently said:
	“If we lose an election we want to lose it fairly, we don’t want to see councillors losing seats where it is not a level playing field.”
	I accept, as I said, that while the rules remain as they are, all political parties will compete to sign up as many people as possible on to postal votes. Everyone in the Chamber knows that electors with postal votes are more likely to use their vote, so all political parties have a vested interest in doing that. However, as we all know, the temptation for some political activists to create fictitious voters and sign them up for postal votes has proved irresistible in places such as Slough, Birmingham and east London.
	It is also clear, yes, that there is a cultural element to this. That has been endorsed by independent organisations such as the Joseph Rowntree Trust. Even if the electoral roll is accurate, as the Bill hopes to ensure, the current on-demand postal voting regime actively disfranchises women and young people by allowing family voting to occur. By family voting, I mean the head of a household pledging the entire family’s votes to a particular political party. He can then ensure that all those votes go to that political party by watching family members complete their postal ballots, completing the ballots himself, or indeed completing them with an activist from the said political party.

Siobhain McDonagh: I think that that intervention is the result of the hon. Gentleman’s own embarrassment at some of his earlier contributions on people who should not be on the electoral register—that gets to the nub of it.
	I accept that I am out of step and that individual registration is going to happen. Given that it is, what can we do to make sure that as many people as possible are on the register?
	Our democracy depends on the fullest electoral register, and that is why I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) referred, and which suggests that anybody who receives a service from the state, gets a library ticket and a driving licence or claims a benefit should have to be on the register. It would be a social contract, whereby the state—the Government—had a connection with people, who were able to vote if they chose to. In that way, we would also bring about a connection that people understood—that there was not something called Government money, but an individual’s money, which they gave to the Government or the state to spend.
	The police are not against a comprehensive electoral register, because it is one of the country’s most effective crime databases, so their job will be made much harder if the register becomes less complete. Banks and credit companies will find it harder to tackle fraud, and councils will also find it harder to investigate benefit fraud.
	If millions drop off the register because individual registration is introduced too rapidly and with too few safeguards, there will be trouble ahead. The Government have made some concessions, but, as the Bill stands, the number of people on the electoral roll and electoral participation will decline.

Mark Harper: The Government did listen, and the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee agreed with our view that
	“careful planning and allocation of resources are likely to be more effective in ensuring all those who are eligible can access their vote without resorting to legislation.”
	That was our view, the Committee agreed with us, and that is the position at which I think we will remai.

Julie Elliott: I should like to speak in support of the reasoned amendment tabled by my right hon. and hon. Friends, but before I make my points, I should like to comment on some of the issues that have been raised in the debate. I do not recognise the picture of electoral fraud being painted by some Members on the Government Benches. I have worked on elections for 30 years or more, and that is a world that I do not know. That is not to say that electoral fraud does not happen, and when it does, it should be tackled aggressively by the police and the authorities. The number of prosecutions is small, however, and it is perhaps stretching the truth to suggest it constitutes the general behaviour during elections.
	I have sympathy with what my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) said about heads of households, and about mums signing up for their families. We will lose that practice, which happens in a lot of places. Also, people already have the right to register individually; they do not have to register on a form filled in by the head of the household.
	My final introductory comment relates to what the hon. Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) said. Thank goodness the return to postal voting on a specific issue is not going to return. The first time I applied for a postal vote was when I was expecting my second child. Although my baby was due in the week of an election, because I was active politically, I still wanted to vote. What a palaver it was getting that postal vote, so thank goodness the Bill does not include postal vote provisions.
	Let me proceed to my main arguments. I speak from my personal experience of elections and on the basis of talking to the people who run elections in Sunderland—my local authority, the electoral registration officer and the elections officers. To put Sunderland in context, it has a fairly static population, not one that churns very quickly. We also have a high percentage of postal votes, partly as a result of the postal vote experiment of 2004, I think, when we had all-out postal vote elections. Many people have retained the right to their postal votes because they like voting that way; they find it convenient. The key to any election is not just having an accurate electoral register, but making it as easy as possible for people to cast the vote to which they are entitled.
	Sunderland delivers its counts very quickly—something of which I am proud—and this is based on organisation relating to the whole electoral process. Bill Crawford and Lindsay Dixon, who run our elections office, take great pride in the finest detail of their work. Efficient counts and efficient election days come from the compiling of the electoral register and the planning that goes into running elections.
	I have moved to support individual voter registration in principle, albeit with some reservations, as I have outlined that there have been problems with accuracy and the completeness of the register in the past. That is why, when in government, Labour introduced the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009. I welcome the Government’s moving of the annual canvass to 2014, which I think will be a help, but I still have some very serious concerns.
	First, on the data-matching exercise, the accuracy of Department for Work and Pensions records is a problem. As an MP, I regularly get casework relating to that inaccuracy. Numbers are flagged to the wrong people. People are usually made aware that their national insurance records are flagged to the wrong person only when they apply for something like a maternity benefit or whatever. The first time they apply for something, the problem arises. Although we can easily get those problems sorted out as MPs, it does highlight the inaccuracy of DWP records. I have also experienced problems surrounding the recording of multiple births. The DWP is not that good, in my experience, at issuing the correct national insurance numbers. Sometimes people simply do not know their national insurance number. Issues about accuracy are evident.
	One of the Department’s pilot schemes involved a ward in my constituency. Having discussed this with the people running the elections in Sunderland and compiling the electoral register, I found that only about half the people data-matched to DWP records. Given that I mentioned that Sunderland has a fairly static population, that is quite a worrying statistic. If we are talking only about half the people in my constituency, I suggest that the proportion might be significantly higher in a constituency with a higher churn. Another problem is that electoral registration records tend to be property-based, whereas DWP records tend to be name-based. Overall, the data-matching process is going to be time consuming and costly to administer. The Department needs to take note of that.
	My second concern relates to postal and proxy votes during the transitional arrangements. The annual canvass will happen in 2014, when the data-matching exercise will be going on. My main concern relates to households in which people remain on the register. People who
	remain on the register because they are on the household and DWP records will automatically retain their postal votes if they have applied for indefinite ones. However, if authorities are satisfied that they live at those addresses because they have checked their own housing benefit or council tax records, those people will remain on the register but their indefinite postal votes will fall, and they will have to reapply. I think that some confusion will be caused when one member of a household retains a postal vote and another does not. Some of the charities that represent people with disabilities fear that such people may be disfranchised.
	In my constituency, there is currently a mini-canvass in February. People are sent a letter telling them either that they are on the register or that they are not, and that they do or do not have postal votes. They are asked to respond to the letter for the purpose of accuracy, and very few do not do so; it receives a massive response. I think that that is a good model to follow and that adopting it would mop up some of the problems with postal votes, particularly in the early years of the transition. I hope that the Government will consider providing funds for it. The mini-canvass ensures that there are very few problems on election day, because if time has been taken to get the register and the postal vote records right, not many people turn up wanting to vote and finding that they are unable to do so.
	My third concern relates to online registration. I have already mentioned problems involving national insurance numbers. Not everyone knows their national insurance number. We saw a demonstration last week, and it was clear that if people did not have their national insurance numbers, the system would stop. We raised the issue, and it is possible that it will be investigated.

Chris Ruane: I asked an outside computer expert at the demonstration what would happen when people did not have their national insurance numbers. I was told “We are working on that.” We know what has been said and what has happened in the past. Computer programmes costing hundreds of millions of pounds have been put in place, and they have not worked. We need to get this one right.

Chris Ruane: I am saying that the Electoral Commission’s research into who has been left off the register shows that in the main they are unemployed or low paid; live in social or council housing; are black or ethnic minority people; or are young students. The hon. Lady can draw her own conclusions about which way they would vote, but I do not think they would vote Tory.
	I want to get on to a more positive agenda and give those on the Front Bench some praise for what they have done. That have listened, to some degree, and there are four aspects that I shall highlight. I want also to praise the Labour Front-Bench team, the shadow Secretary of State for Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), and my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr David), who has pursued the issue like a dog with a bone. We would not have had the concessions from the Government without his doggedness; I use that word guardedly.
	Civic society has rallied on the issue. Two groups in particular answered the clarion call two years ago, when the proposals were announced—the Electoral Reform Society and Unlock Democracy. They have helped take the issue out to wider society, to civic society, and made people aware of it—the judiciary, the police, Operation Black Vote, Scope and other organisations. I pay tribute to all those and to the academics who provided us with research. The progress that has been made is good, as far as it goes. From being a lifestyle choice, which in my view was obscene, the right to register has become a civic duty. I thank Ministers for that.
	The annual canvass, which was not in place previously, will be in place for 2014. That is progress. The fixed penalty notice is probably the biggest progress that we have had. Again, I thank the Front-Bench team for that. I hate to say it, but threats and fines work. The hon. Member for Ceredigion referred to Denbighshire county council’s electoral registration form. In the middle of that form, in big bold letters, is a message: “If you do not fill in this form, you are liable to a £1,000 fine.” People will be visited and told three times that they are liable to this fine. The local chief executive, Mohammed Mehmet, will write to the individual—I have the letters and the forms, if anybody wants a copy—saying, “My electoral registration officers have been to your household three time. You have refused to return the form. We are now turning this over to our legal department.” If standardisation is to come about—another aspect that I welcome—I urge the Front-Bench team to look at best practice in Denbighshire.
	I am pleased with the carry-over from the old register to the general election in May 2015, but why could it not be carried over to 1 December, the freeze date for the next boundary review? It is only six months further down the line. Opposition Members feel that it is a boundary review stitch-up, done in the knowledge that the electoral registration rates will go down by 10% in that critical period. That will leave 10% of probably the poorest people in the country off the register. That could be avoided. The Minister could come to the Dispatch Box and say, “Right, we will carry it over an extra six months,” and he would have cross-party consensus on taking these matters forward.
	I am concerned about downgrading the role of the Electoral Commission. I have been a fierce critic of the Electoral Commission over the years. The changes that Labour introduced in 2005-06 took too long to implement. We did not insist on electoral registration officers doing the job that they were being paid to do, but in the past year or so the Electoral Commission has been a star turn. It has highlighted what the impact would be if the original proposals had gone ahead, again saying that electoral registration rates would have gone down to 65%. The commission may have been punished for its effectiveness over the past year.
	As the secondary legislation unfolds, a lot more political flack may be coming. We need an independent arbiter who can give a straight-down-the-line view. If we downgrade the role of the Electoral Commission, we are taking away a valuable element providing that independent view.
	I understand the Government’s predicament on fixed penalty notices. They do not want to create a system whereby local authorities can go out and fire those notices left, right and centre and get lots of money for themselves, which would be wrong, but the local authorities that will spend the most money will often be the poorest in the country. There will be cuts to social services and education. They will be forced to decide whether to prioritise electoral registration, and canvassing is something they are required to do by law, knocking on the doors of non-responders three times, which is costly. Those local authorities need financing for that work. I ask for that to be considered so that some of the money from the Treasury can be given back to the authorities with the biggest work load.
	We need the details of the secondary legislation to be published concurrently so that we can judge exactly what the impact will be. I am afraid that trust will not do on this one; we tried trust two years ago and got only an element of it back in the past couple of weeks.
	I mentioned online registration in an intervention. I went to see a demonstration of it in the Jubilee Room, and when I asked what happens for those who do not have their number, it was like throwing a spanner in the works. I was told that no one had yet got on top of it. The Minister said that 5% of people will be unable to find their registration number or their national insurance number. What happens to the ethnic minorities who do not have a good understanding of the English language? What happens to people who are functionally illiterate? We will send them letters telling them to go here or there, apply for a form, then fill it in and put it online, but that will not happen. Again, it will tend to be the poorest in society who will be punished as a result.
	We need precise details on how the £108 million of funding will be ring-fenced and spent. If it is allocated for registration, it should be spent on registration. We saw in the emergency Budget in June 2010 that the first thing the Government slashed was the participation fund for increasing registration, which was £2 million over three years. It was not a priority then, but I hope it will be in future.
	The Government point to Labour and say that we did nothing for 13 years and had 6 million people off the register. There is a golden opportunity to change that, but the Minister said at the outset that after all is done and dusted and all these changes have been implemented they hope to have 6 million people—perhaps a different 6 million—still off the register. I do not think that that is good enough.

Simon Reevell: I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate and, indeed, to follow the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane). The electoral process is something that we all have experience of, but it is clear from the contribution we have heard today that we have encountered it in a number of different forms. If it varies between the good, the bad and the ugly, I am afraid that I have seen at first hand its downright ugly form. The central purpose of the Bill is to ensure that individual voters retain ownership and control of their vote right up to the moment when, either by post or in person, their vote is cast, which is absolutely crucial.
	I realise that to many that is simply a statement of the very obvious. The idea that the voter retains control of their vote until it is cast is anticipated almost with certainty at every election, but unfortunately, owing to the actions of a relatively small number of individuals in one part of my constituency, it represents a change that is essential and, sadly, long overdue.
	For some years in the Savile Town area of my constituency, annual elections have gone hand in hand with annual allegations of voter fraud and intimidation. In 2010, I saw the intimidation for myself. I witnessed groups of young men outside a polling station, whispering, spitting, gesturing, milling around and pushing in front of me. Having to leave a group of people to guard cars should not be a part of polling day, nor should warnings to stay away or to leave.
	I have spoken to the police officers who have to deal with the situation, and I have heard the accounts of those manning the polling stations. When I saw that the Bill contained provisions for police community support officers to enter polling stations, my first reaction was that it was to allow reinforcements to be called, not that they would operate as an alternative to police constables.
	I have no doubt that the enthusiasm of a small number of people to try to ensure victory for their side continues to result in behaviour that is not only inappropriate, but unlawful. Persistent rumours and allegations of postal vote fraud accompany that intimidatory behaviour. This year, the local authority raised concerns with the police about the similarity of the handwriting on a large number of postal votes; and some people turned up to vote only to be told that, according to the register, they already had by post, when they clearly had not or, at least, had not done so themselves. I do not know whether the result of the election was affected, but that really is the point: I do not know.
	You may wonder, Madam Deputy Speaker, why that behaviour has been going on for so long. Why have the police not investigated it? Why has no one got to the bottom of the repeated allegations of postal fraud which, if untrue, represent a dreadful slur on the community concerned? According to local people, including those affected, the answer is said to involve that word: community.
	When asked to take this year’s allegations seriously, the police, so the complaint goes, referred to “community sensitivities” and showed a reluctance to engage which has defined their response in previous years. Why is that? It is because all those who are said to be involved are from Savile Town’s Asian community, a minority of individuals who appear to insist that they know best and who take it upon themselves to ensure that someone else’s vote is cast however they think fit.
	It is hugely insulting to the vast majority of Savile Town’s community that the police appear reluctant to act. That is so, whether the police are prepared to regard sensitivities as more important than the democratic process, or whether the police think it appropriate to make an allowance due, as they put it, to a
	“lack of understanding of the process.”
	The former is to ignore the legitimate sensitivities of the vast majority, who must resent this issue being the local headline every time there is a ballot, and who no doubt want it resolved once and for all. The latter is to make condescending allowances that excuse deliberate criminal activity—and is offensive in the assumption that, somehow for some people in Savile Town, it is all too difficult.
	I thought it appropriate to raise with the chief constable of West Yorkshire my intention to refer to this topic and my observations regarding the attitude of the police. I did so not least because he might seek to challenge the assertion that the issue is being held at arm’s length, or is regarded as too difficult, because of the matter of race. I know that the chief constable of West Yorkshire is a busy man—to be fair, so is the Member for Dewsbury—but the message left on my telephone by his assistant, informing me that the chief constable had been busy on Monday, was travelling on Tuesday to Manchester for a conference and, therefore, could not speak to me, might seem to confirm the reticence repeatedly complained of by the vast majority, who are the decent citizens of Savile Town and who have rightly bemoaned the lack of proactive investigation. It also does little to silence those who would try to incite hatred in Dewsbury by saying that people in Savile Town are somehow treated differently by the police. The lesson of the recent trial arising from the dreadful abuse in Rochdale is that all communities must be treated equally where there is evidence to suggest that police investigation is required.
	Perhaps the most important right is the right to vote. Perhaps the most important responsibility is to exercise that right in accordance with the law. If the Bill encourages and facilitates that right and assists in the exercise of that responsibility, it will be a step in the right direction.

Paul Blomfield: I will tell you later.
	I want to express my concern about how this Bill will profoundly undermine our democracy by reference to two groups in my constituency, the first of which is those in urban areas. Let me compare my constituency with that of my political neighbour, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg). My constituency is at the heart of Sheffield. It is an inner-city, multicultural area with large council estates, two universities, and a high level of electoral turnover. As a result, 17% of households already have nobody on the electoral register. The Deputy Prime Minister’s constituency consists of our leafy suburbs; it is monocultural with large areas of comfortable owner-occupation, a stable population, and only 4% of households with nobody on the register. There is therefore already a huge disparity between the number of people we represent and the number of registered voters. Assuming, on the basis of current boundaries, that we both have an average of 74,000 registered voters, the Deputy Prime Minister is representing an adult population of about 77,000 while I am representing about 89,000 people.
	That situation will be exacerbated in 2020 if the 2015 boundary review is based on the register that many people fear. If we do have 60% registration levels, a redrawn Sheffield Central after the 2015 boundary review will have an adult population of up to 123,000—some 50% more than in Sheffield, Hallam. I recognise that the level may not be 60%, but we should consider seriously that significant imbalance in a depleted inner-city constituency. It is certainly not democratic and certainly not right.
	Many of the people who will be excluded from the register are precisely those who form a huge proportion of our casework, and their voice in this Parliament will be reduced. Together with the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, the Bill is leading us towards a US-style democracy that excludes the disadvantaged and disengaged at election times and instead focuses on the needs of the more privileged, thereby poisoning our politics. The Deputy Prime Minister has rather grandly compared his ambitions for our democracy with those of the Great Reform Act of 1832. [ Interruption. ] I understand the reason for the laughter. The Great Reform Act increased representation
	for our cities, whereas this measure, together with the boundary review and the other reforms, will reduce the voice of our cities.
	The other issue I want to talk about is young people, particularly students. Not all students are young, but the vast majority are, and will increasingly be so as a result of this Government’s policies, with reports this week revealing a drop in the number of mature students. Many of those young people are worryingly disillusioned with democratic politics. The Liberal Democrats’ broken pledge on tuition fees has not only damaged their party but damaged the trust in politics of a whole generation of young people. When I talk to students on the doorstep, they are clear that that experience of raised expectations and broken hope has led them to not want to participate in the system.
	Both Sheffield’s great universities are in my constituency and 31,800 students live in it. Some of them live there for 31 weeks a year and many for 52. It is their main place of residence and they contribute to the economy and life of the city. They have a right to have their voice heard in elections.
	The university of Sheffield, in common with many universities across the country, has a system of block registration for all eligible students in university accommodation. That will end with this Bill. I assume that the Government do not think that our universities are guilty of electoral fraud, so why is there a need to outlaw block registration?
	The students union finance officer, Harry Horton, explained the impact to me:
	“When students first arrive at University and live in halls, amongst all the other things that are going on, registering to vote often isn’t a priority and it is comforting to know that it’s often done automatically. If this is changed then it would become another form to fill in during the whirlwind first few weeks away from home and some students, particularly those not engaged in democracy, will not be registered”.
	Crucially, students will be particularly under-registered in the first term of each academic year. The students unions of both the universities in my constituency run vigorous electoral registration campaigns in the run-up to elections—in February, March and April—that work.
	The Bill will effectively exclude tens of thousands of students—my constituents—from the electoral roll in December 2015, and therefore from consideration when the boundaries are redrawn, denying them an effective voice.

Priti Patel: I have taken a degree of interest in the Bill, but unlike the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) I cannot say that I have had a 10-year interest in the matter, as I am a new Member of Parliament.
	This debate has thrown up a wide range of issues. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Simon Reevell), because he highlighted some important issues. That is why I support the Bill and the commitment of the Government to reduce electoral fraud, to restore confidence in the electoral register and to rebuild trust in politics. I say that as a newish MP. It is clear that over the past decade trust in the political process and political parties has seriously declined. Let us face it, no party has been immune from scandals or sleaze allegations. The Bill is a welcome step in the right direction.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Simon Reevell) and other Members highlighted some appalling incidents of electoral fraud. Large numbers of voters have appeared in a single property, or political activists have harvested postal votes. The Bill is vital because it will uphold the integrity of the electoral system and reinforce the fundamental principle of one person, one vote. It will make it more difficult for people to attempt to manipulate elections by abusing the electoral register.
	A lot of Members who have come to the House since 2010 have had various experiences of elections, such as local elections, European elections and their own general election campaigns. They bring to the House fresh, live examples of what they have seen in their constituencies.
	The Electoral Commission has since 2003advocated the introduction of individual electoral registration. We had a startling reminder of the need for the change in the build-up to this year’s London elections. I am sure right hon. and hon. Members will recall that during the mayoral election campaign, one newspaper—I wish I had brought it with me—had front-page stories week after week about reports and allegations of the electoral system being abused in Tower Hamlets. Appallingly, we heard of ghost voting in a by-election in that borough, with some flats containing eight people
	who were registered to vote and political activists going around the homes of vulnerable voters harvesting their blank postal vote ballot papers. There was apparently also a huge proliferation in the number of people applying for postal votes. Thankfully, a police investigation is now taking place, but my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury highlighted the fact that he had a difficult time in getting the police engaged with some of the problems in his constituency.
	The failure of election officials to pick up on problems such as a large number of people in a small dwelling being registered to vote reflects badly on our democracy. That is why this is absolutely the right Bill. It will support individuals’ right to secure their place on the electoral register, and it will reduce the chance of people being able to abuse the electoral process in such a way.
	It is essential that robust action is taken against election officials and authorities that fail to take reasonable and proactive steps to stamp out illegal practice. My hon. Friend the Minister highlighted the good deal of thought that has gone into the Bill. Many constructive steps are being taken, such as resources going to local authorities and data-matching pilots being conducted. I hope that all local authorities will embrace those measures and be proactive in resolving problems and considering electoral registration.
	I also welcome the extension of the election timetable to 25 working days, particularly because it will help British citizens overseas and members of our armed forces deployed abroad. Our forces are stationed in some of the most dangerous places in the world, and they risk their lives every day. In the general election, they were effectively disfranchised. The changes in the Bill will give them more time to receive and return their ballot paper.
	Up the road from my constituency is the neighbouring constituency of Colchester. My constituents are immensely proud of the courage and bravery that those at Colchester garrison show, and of what they do in peacekeeping operations and in battle. Everything possible should be done to guarantee that they can vote, and the measures in the Bill will help them to do so.
	I wish briefly to touch on voting as a civic duty. As a relatively new Member of Parliament, as I go around my constituency, I am impressed and feel optimistic about young people when I visit schools. When I talk to them about elections, the electoral process and democracy, they look at the system with a great deal of hope, and they want to participate. School elections go on all the time—for school councils, for example. A great deal of positive work can be done, and the Bill is a welcome step forward.
	I will raise one highly topical issue, with which the Parliamentary Secretary is familiar. I seek reassurance from him that the Bill will not be used as a vehicle to enable prisoners to receive the right to vote. We have heard the latest position, and the Prime Minister spoke about the matter today. It is a serious issue, and I trust that the Parliamentary Secretary will give an assurance in his winding-up speech that the Bill will not be used in that way.
	I welcome the Bill, which is a good step in the right direction. It should not be considered through a party political lens.

Jonathan Edwards: I want to use the opportunity this afternoon to repeat the concerns that I first raised in January in an Opposition day debate on the subject.
	First, I am concerned that, although the proposals have a worthy goal, we are ignoring the difficulties posed by the dual aims of ensuring the highest number of registrations on the electoral roll, while at the same time solving the problem of electoral fraud. Secondly, and especially given the experience of an 11% drop in electoral registration in Northern Ireland in the immediate aftermath of the introduction of IER, I am concerned that the proposals are being introduced at the same time as other major changes, such as the equalisation of constituency sizes, based on the electoral roll. There is surely consensus that the preferred outcome is that all adults who should be registered on the electoral roll are registered, and that they participate in elections. Everybody should be on the electoral roll and have the opportunity to cast their vote.
	The principle of individual electoral registration is positive, in that electors should take upon themselves the responsibility to register to vote in their own right, rather than its being done under the aegis of a household. All relevant people should be willing and able to register, and have the same opportunity to do so. However, there may be a disconnect between the equality of opportunity to register, where all relevant people may do so, and the equality of outcome, where all relevant people do so.
	The Electoral Commission reported in December 2010 that 6 million people were not registered across the UK, with register completion rates of between 85% to 87%. It is unclear to me how IER, which creates a greater barrier to registration, will ensure that as many people as possible are on the electoral roll. While accepting that it is always a worry, the number of cases of electoral fraud that have been uncovered are minimal compared with the need to get those 6 million people on to the electoral register. We therefore welcome the decision to drop the idea of voluntary registration, which was raised in the White Paper, and to maintain the civic duty.
	Electoral registration has a greater relevance than ever following the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, which will create constituencies that are designed to have a number of voters within 5% of a UK constituency mean, predicated on the number of electors on the electoral roll, rather than the actual adult population.
	Many people are particularly concerned about registration among certain socio-economic and age groups, including more transient populations, such as young people, who move house frequently, and those who are already disconnected from civic society, and may not make the effort to register.
	When IER was first introduced in the north of Ireland, the number on the roll dropped initially by 11% and has only gradually been rebuilt over time, in part, one might say, because of the strong community links that exist in the Six Counties. We must avoid that drop in registration occurring in the first place.
	The Government have already announced a process of data-matching pilots and we shall watch their progress keenly. We welcome the moving of the autumn 2013
	canvass back to spring 2014 to prevent significant deterioration of the registers before the introduction of IER, although that will presumably mean an 18-month gap and deterioration in the registers from this year’s canvass until spring 2014. How will that affect EROs and preparation of registers for the European elections of June 2014, and the Scottish independence referendum, which is due to be held later that year?
	The effects of the Bill moved a little closer to home for me this week, with the publication of a Green Paper on future electoral arrangements for the National Assembly for Wales by the Secretary of State for Wales. I do not intend to discuss that very interesting Green Paper in detail during the debate, but in short the Secretary of State highlighted options for constituency size in Wales, based on the same principle as that for equalisation of numbers on the electoral roll for Westminster constituencies: whether we have 30 or 40 Assembly constituency seats. That means that the concerns I have raised about the effect of electoral registration matter regardless. Members will know that during the progress of that 2011 Act, I consistently criticised the principle of ignoring community, historical and geographical links in the formation of new constituencies. Non-registration therefore becomes crucial in both Assembly and Westminster elections. Not only is a non-registered person unable to vote and disfranchised, but the population of the constituency decreases, because those “non-people” are not counted.
	Of similar importance is the length of time for which registration is carried forward under IER as we move to the new system. The Minister can correct me if I have misunderstood this, but it is generally considered that most people who are moved forward will be registered in 2015 for the Westminster elections, but will not be carried forward for a second year, which would take us up to the National Assembly for Wales elections in 2016. The Electoral Commission makes specific reference to those with postal or proxy votes and the possibility of adverse impacts on participation after the introduction of IER. It will be a tragedy if, owing to administrative changes, electors in Wales find themselves unable to vote in their national elections. I hope that, in his winding-up speech, the Minister outlines how he will prevent that nightmare scenario.
	Clause 14 repeals section 16 of the Representation of the People Act 1985, which is on holding community council elections in Wales. Will the Minister confirm the process by which that decision was reached in respect of Wales, and whether the power to determine election dates for such elections lies with the UK Government or the Welsh Government?
	I conclude by repeating my key argument. The main aim of electoral registration is to ensure the completion and accuracy of the register. With so much change taking in electoral administration as a result of the 2011 Act, I am concerned that we might inadvertently end up disfranchising electors and skewing the electoral system.

Nick de Bois: I have not had such an experience myself. I am shocked to hear of the hon. Gentleman’s experience, but not surprised. I am grateful to him for drawing it to my attention.
	Our system currently depends on trust, and unsurprisingly that trust can and will be broken. The proposals for the use of national insurance numbers and individual registration are therefore a massive step forward, and I hope that they will implemented as soon as possible. I shall deal shortly with the question of timing, but I should like first to raise four points with the Minister. I would be grateful if he responded to them, or at least considered them and then responded at some future date.
	First, the co-ordinated online record of electors presents the possibility that people can move and remain on a multitude of registers. As we have heard, the population is increasingly transient, so there will be ever more such instances. I am not a great fan of the “database state”, but I would like to know how the Minister proposes do deal with this problem, because without a record, there will be no central mechanism.
	Under the current electoral system, signing up for a postal vote, and therefore being able to exercise the vote without going to the polling station, is easier, and there is potential for the use of false names. There will be some improvement in that regard, but we must consider the timetabling of the Bill, and the fact that many key elements, such as individual registration, will not be put in place until 2014, given the two years it will take for individuals to drop off the register. Therefore, the 2014 general election will be fought using fundamentally the same register as before, but with an increased possibility that it will not be as clean a register as we would like. I fail to understand why we are not trying to focus on the 2015 election. I realise that Ministers have been criticised for introducing these measures too swiftly, but I am trying to understand what trade-off has been agreed so that we are not seeking to put the changes in place for the next general election.
	Like many other Members, I welcome the extension of the election period to 25 days. However, if I have read the proposals correctly, it will be possible to apply for a postal vote up to six days before the general election. Does that not present some demanding challenges for electoral returning officers—I am happy to be able to say that we in Enfield we have one of the best—in verifying those records, and if there were some organised fraud in postal voting, would that not present an even tougher challenge?
	The Bill’s provisions deal with fraudulent entries on the electoral register, but very little is being done to deal with the growing problem of personation—the act of turning up at the polling station and using someone else’s details to get a ballot paper. We have already heard that the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) could appear as Elvis Presley. That scenario was entertainingly described by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson). The reality is that, however implausible that might be, it is highly possible if the name “Elvis Presley” is on the register.
	I therefore ask the Minister to expand further on the reasons for not requiring some form of voter identification at the polling station. Predictably, Opposition Members said the answer to the problem was to introduce their identity card scheme. As we know, that is not necessary, as illustrated in Northern Ireland, where perfectly acceptable methods of identification are available.
	I was delighted that the chair of the Electoral Commission, Jenny Watson, who has been calling for voter identification at polling stations since 2010, has urged for such a change in the law to be considered, to
	“help us all be sure our voting system is safe.”
	I am confused as to why the Government will not pursue this matter further. I understand that one objection might be that such a change is a step change too far, and may threaten voter turnout. However, within two years of its being introduced in Northern Ireland, the turnout was up to 62.9%, which was slightly higher than the average for a UK general election. I ask the Minister to share his thoughts with us.
	Let me be clear, however, that I consider this Bill to be long overdue and extremely welcome. It has my full support, but I will be very grateful if I am able to offer it even greater support, with consideration being given to some of these proposed changes, so we can have full confidence in the register of voters.

Geoffrey Cox: The reason for my seeking to secure this Adjournment debate is the death of five men in circumstances that will, I hope, attract the indignation of every right-thinking man and woman listening to my narrative.
	The sea conditions in the north-west Pacific in the months of November and December are notoriously dangerous. The navigational directions of the Admiralty speak of frequent gales, huge seas and swells rising to over 4 metres. These mountainous and confused seas are raised by violent winds and driven by tropical storms and hurricanes. Into the teeth of those conditions sailed the fragile, 40-feet catamaran, the Cat Shot. She was skippered by a constituent of mine, John Anstess, a man born in Plymouth, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile), whose family reside in the village of Beer Alston in west Devon. He was an experienced skipper and a decent family man. He had set sail in August 2006, en route to Seattle on the north-west coast of the United States of America.
	The Cat Shot had crossed the south Atlantic and, after making several stops and negotiating the Panama canal, put in to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico to shelter from Hurricane Sergio. Hurricane Sergio weakened and died off on 18 November and, on 24 November, the Cat Shot arrived at San Diego. There, the crew refused to continue because they thought that it would be unsafe to do so at that time of year in that vessel. On 30 November, the Cat Shot arrived in Los Angeles, where she took on a replacement crew member, Richard Beckman. On 7 December, she made San Francisco, where she took on another crew member, Dave Rodman. On 8 December, she departed from San Francisco for the final run to Seattle. She was skippered, as I have said, by John Anstess.
	That was the last time those three men were seen alive. When the catamaran was recovered, the hull door was found open and a line was attached to the propeller bracket. She had capsized. The crew had clearly left the vessel after that happened. The log was recovered. The final entry had been made at 03:00 hours on 11 December 2006—it had been the skipper’s practice to make entries roughly every three hours—from which the US coastguard concluded that the vessel had foundered off the coast of Oregon between 03:00 and 06:00 hours on that day. The log recorded very heavy weather conditions and confused seas. The vessel run before the wind, bare poled, with no sails and with sea anchors deployed. A storm had developed in the area at the time, and the Admiralty court judge who inquired into the matter stated that it was
	“most probable that size and steepness of a combination of waves and swell was sufficient to overturn her.”
	How had the vessel come to be in that place at that time? John Anstess had been engaged by a company called Reliance Yacht Management, or Reliance Yacht Deliveries Ltd, as a delivery skipper. It is the conduct of that company and its principal director, Mr Nicholas
	Irving, that is and should be under scrutiny by my hon. Friend the Minister, as well as the important questions of public policy that this case raises.
	The United States coastguard conducted an inquiry, which concluded that
	“the master felt pressure from his employers to deliver the yacht against safety standards (no survival suits, radar, heating, proper communications gear, proper life boat for ocean travel)...the master requested to travel a different route via Hawaii because he felt it would be safer and quicker and was denied permission by his employer who stated the owners would not allow it.”
	The judge in the Admiralty Court concluded:
	“The question is whether it was proper to navigate a vessel with the characteristics of this catamaran into a part of the world where she could or was likely to meet such bad weather conditions…In my judgment it could generally be regarded as intrinsically unsafe and therefore foolhardy to take a 40 foot…multi hull vessel across any piece of water when it was expected to meet hurricane or typhoon conditions…this is particularly true if it was possible to avoid such conditions”.
	The judge concluded in the High Court that Reliance should have taken steps to inquire what conditions would face the vessel. If not, it would have had no way of knowing whether it was sensible to commit the skipper and the crew to the delivery of a boat within that time scale.
	The judge concluded that Irving had done nothing to check the weather to be expected in the north Pacific at that time of year or to carry out elementary route planning, which is a prerequisite of the responsible operation of sailing vessels. Had he done so, he would have been bound to conclude that the voyage was unsafe. This was the view of the crew who left the boat at San Diego. It was the view of the local skippers. This view was conveyed to Reliance, but it was ignored. The only inference—I repeat, the only inference—is that Mr Irving and his company were more interested in their reputation for delivering boats on time than with the lives of their skippers and crew.
	When Mr Anstess urgently and repeatedly raised the sensible suggestion that he should take the Hawaii route because it would have avoided the area of bad weather and was a route that was more off wind than the coastal route and therefore much more appropriate for a catamaran, it was rejected by Irving with the words that the “client will go ballistic”. John Anstess had also e-mailed his sister on 25 November to say that he was getting no help from Reliance and had requested a change of route, but that Nick had laughed at him. Nick did not say, as a responsible operator would have, “Well, John, it is a matter for you; do what you think is best—you’re the captain on the spot.” He directed John Anstess to sea; he directed him to his death.
	When John Anstess suggested wintering in San Diego—of all the options, the most sensible—he was told: “John, you have definitely got a tired attitude. I still like you, John, but this trip you have definitely showed a different side to you.” The judge rightly concluded that this was a rejection. He found that there was no competent managerial system in place at Reliance that could evaluate the relevant dangers and make proper decisions. He agreed with the United States coastguard that John Anstess had been put under pressure to complete the voyage. He found Reliance negligent and the loss of the crew directly attributable to its conduct. He also found that when John Anstess had sent a message stating that the weather was not looking
	good—that there were strong south-easterlies gusting 30 to 40 knots for the next three or four days and a massive low system out over the Pacific—he was told by the company that its forecast shows “light winds” out to the south-west and south-east, and either way not from the north.
	Let us pause a moment, Madam Deputy Speaker, and reflect upon the wickedness of such an act. The judge concluded there had been no such weather forecast, and that it had been part of Reliance’s approach to put pressure on John Anstess to complete the delivery. He had gone ahead only against his own best judgment, after the company had ignored and overridden his warning and advice. The judge found that John Anstess had probably survived the capsize and had rigged the line around the propeller, no doubt in an attempt to remain attached to the capsized vessel in the swelling seas. So he ordered that Mr Irving and his company should pay £3,000 to his relatives and estate, and should pay the remainder of the $7,500 fee for which John had contracted to supply the boat. A note of a phone call from John Anstess was found at Reliance, saying that he was
	“on a boat already suffering stress damages. I am being pushed into taking the boat into even more extreme weather than I have encountered so far and nobody seems to care.”
	What has been the reaction of Mr Irving? Has he paid the paltry sum that Reliance was ordered to pay by the High Court? He has not. He has applied to dissolve his company, and with that dissolution to escape the judgment debt. He is in the habit of dissolving companies: he has dissolved no fewer than four so far.
	John Anstess is not the only skipper who has been lost at sea while delivering yachts for Reliance, and for Mr Irving. Although it beggars belief, just two months later Steve Hobley, another Devon man—from Newton Abbot—was sailing on the right, safe and prudent route from England to Miami when he was ordered to deviate and sail north of Bermuda to take a 38-feet catamaran to Annapolis in Maryland. He was told by Irving that if he failed to make the diversion, he would never work for the company again. The area is notorious for bad weather at that time of year, and the catamaran capsized. His two crew survived for 11 hours in the Atlantic on its upturned hull, but they watched Mr Hobley die of hypothermia and slip beneath the waves in the darkness.
	Alistair Crawford, a young and inexperienced skipper on his first trip, was sent to sea to deliver a yacht to the Caribbean. Irving had lied to the owners about Alistair Crawford’s qualifications, claiming on a falsified CV that he possessed thousands of miles of seagoing experience. Other yacht companies had warned their employees not to put to sea that night, but Alistair Crawford—just like John Anstess and Steve Hobley—was subjected to pressure to do so. The yacht foundered, losing its mast, in storm conditions and 60-knot winds in the Bay of Biscay. It was not equipped to deal with those conditions.
	What are the issues raised by this sad and tragic story? Not a single action has been taken by any authority in this country to bring to account Mr Irving and his company for that story of neglect, irresponsibility and reckless endangerment of the lives of human beings. The yacht was registered as a pleasure craft and did not have to meet the rigorous requirement for charter vessels,
	even though it was being taken by employed crew—many of them British citizens—from this country to the port of destination, for pay.
	And what of John Anstess? His Cat Shot was foreign-registered, and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency says that it is unable to act for that reason. My office has been in touch with the agency today, and it continues to adopt that stance. This is an outrage. Something must be done to bring the company to account. I must tell my hon. Friend the Minister that I do not believe that enough consideration has been given to whether action can be taken. I do not accept that this matter is beyond the criminal jurisdiction of the courts of this country merely because the vessel flew a foreign flag. The instructions to go to sea that the judge found were negligent, the lies about the weather conditions, and the pressure put on the captain and the masters by Irving of Reliance were all carried out in this country. If they amount to a criminal wrong, there can be indictments in this country, even though the impact may have been felt 6,000 miles across the seas.
	The Maritime and Coastguard Agency must be asked to look at this issue again. It has signed a memorandum of understanding with other prosecution agencies—the Health and Safety Executive, the Crown Prosecution Service. My hon. Friend the Minister must prompt those agencies to look again at this matter. The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 puts duties on employers—which is what the judge in the High Court found Reliance and Irving were—to ensure the safety of their employees. The instructions, the equipping of the vessel, the lack of navigational planning were all carried out in England, and, I submit, are therefore subject to the jurisdiction of our courts.
	However, even if I am wrong about that—even if all these agencies, through all their concerted efforts, cannot find a way of affording justice to the families of these five men who have died—there is still an important public policy question. How can we allow companies that hold in their hands the lives of hundreds of men every year—sending them to sea in fragile pleasure craft, apparently unregulated by any authority—to continue to do so if they demonstrate the degree of callousness and neglect that Irving and Reliance demonstrated in the story I have just related?
	It is time that the Government seized this nettle. We must have an urgent review to see whether it is possible to regulate the yacht delivery industry, at least by imposing basic standards of integrity and conduct upon it. As the judge in the Admiralty court found, the company had a responsibility to ensure that it was not committing the skipper to a time scale in this area of the world that no reasonable, sensible or prudent ship or yacht operator would agree to. What would happen in any other sphere? In a land-based case, the employer would be guilty of an offence under the 1974 Act for failing to take reasonable steps to ensure the safety of his employees.
	Watching tonight will be the families: John’s father, Jack Anstess, and his sister, Wendy, as well as Steve Hobley’s daughter and granddaughter, and the families of the crew who perished with John off the Oregon coast on 11 December 2006. My hon. Friend the Minister is a man of integrity, conscience and compassion, and it is essential that our Government render justice to them. They cry out for justice; the families expect justice.
	Only very rarely must one bring to the House a story of such tragedy and such outrageous conduct that has not already been policed or brought to account in the courts. In the last resort, it is this House that can render justice to those wronged and aggrieved families, and it is my hon. Friend who can commence that process. I am grateful for his agreeing to see the family with me in a few weeks’ time, but that will not be sufficient if we do not demonstrate that we are determined to ensure that all the families know this Government and the regulatory authorities have done all they can to satisfy their plea, which I have articulated, for justice and for this man and his company to be brought to account.

Michael Penning: In the short time I have remaining, I will try as best I can to articulate my thoughts on the issue that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) has brought to the House’s attention today, and to me privately before this debate. It would be wrong of me not to say that my thoughts and prayers are with the families of those who were lost at sea. Going to sea has always been an enormously dangerous occupation—for anybody—and the bravery of our seafarers has been renowned for centuries.
	It is shocking for me to have to stand before this House with not one but both hands tied behind my back. I have questioned my officials at length about the powers that I or other Government agencies have to deal not only with this issue, but with the other serious crimes at sea that I have recently discussed with the International Maritime Organisation—the body with responsibility for such matters—so that we can achieve international recognition of the problems. I will return to that issue, if I can, in moment.
	I want to express my particular admiration for the sister of John Anstess, Mrs Wendy Wood, who has pursued her campaign for improvements in safety not just in order to bring to justice those involved in this case, but to protect other seafarers in similar situations who are delivering British yachts and other vessels around the world. We would all like what she is calling for to actually happen—particularly me, as the Minister with responsibility for such matters. However, the difficulty is that, as became clear in discussions with the outgoing and the new secretary-general of the IMO, we cannot act in isolation. The cases that my hon. and learned Friend referred to are on the other side of the Atlantic. We must make sure that we do not simply move this problem to France or Belgium, for instance, so that the same terrible situation occurs there.
	In saying that, it is very important that we get the facts right. As my hon. and learned Friend said, the yacht that John was employed to move was not registered in the United Kingdom, and the sad loss occurred outside our territorial waters. That restricts enormously the powers of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. As I have said to him, he has full access to the MCA at any time, and to any information he requires. He is a learned man and perhaps knows more about these matters than I do, but I can only go by the legal advice I am given. We have no powers in this regard. I was very
	surprised to discover, on looking at the documents, that even though the company in question was registered in the UK, the HSE has no powers. I wondered whether anything could be done under the new UK legislation on corporate manslaughter, or under reciprocal international agreements—we have seen a lot in the press about our reciprocal agreements with America—but it cannot.
	My hon. and learned Friend and I will work together with the families concerned, and if we can find a way to prosecute this issue through my Department, my agencies, my Secretary of State or through any other Government Department, we will do so. My fear is that we will not find a way, but we will try, and if we can act, we will. Should we not find suitable avenues, I intend to push within government to shut this down for future situations, which is what John’s sister so desperately wants.
	We are signed up to the international convention for the safety of life at sea—or the SOLAS convention—and so are all the red ensigns in the Crown protectorate. I know that my hon. and learned Friend knows the Cayman Islands well, and it flies my flag—the buck stops with me in respect of the red ensign, no matter where it flies in the world. So we are all party to this. The regulations are quite explicit. They put the responsibility for all navigational decisions in the hands of the master or skipper of the vessel. The regulations also make it an offence for anyone to try to pressurise the master into making decisions against his better judgment. That fits perfectly within our territorial waters, but not on the high seas. That is one of the biggest things we can work on with the IMO and address in the work we are doing to tackle crimes at sea. That is because it is the responsibility of the signatory to the regulations and the member states, although on the high seas the situation is completely different.
	An investigation did take place, and I have some quotes here from the United States Coast Guard. It investigated the accident, and the quotations that my hon. and learned Friend cited were absolutely right. But—this is the big but—it concluded that no criminal offence had been committed under US law. That was the US Coast Guard’s comment, not mine. I have to, probably understandably, respect its decision.
	I find it astonishing that after Mrs Wood secured the civil judgment against the company, the fines were paltry—“loose change” would be the polite term for them. The fact that the owner has not even paid the fines is another matter. If there is any way we can work within government to try to address that, too, we will do so. It was a civil action, so the situation is slightly different from that of a criminal action, as my hon. and learned Friend understands fully.
	Nobody in this House would have put the argument across in a more lucid way than my hon. and learned Friend. As the Minister responsible for the agencies involved in this situation, I feel that it cannot be right that we are so restricted within government as to what we can and cannot do, given that we all want to do the right thing internationally, as well as here. From the discussions I have had with the new secretary- general of the IMO, I am aware that there is a keenness within the international community to address the terrible situation of serious crimes at sea, of which this is one,
	that go, not “uninvestigated”, although I nearly said that, but without reaching the natural justice that we would all be looking for.
	This is not the only incident that I have been working on recently. It is right and proper that my hon. and learned Friend has brought these issues to me, but I am dealing with other issues where people have been raped at sea, murdered at sea or have vanished off ships on the high seas. One of the things that I have found really difficult is that one of the defences from some of the smaller flag nations is that they—perhaps—do not see the offence as serious enough or perhaps do not have enough funding within their police authority to investigate it fully. That is no excuse at all, and that is one of the big issues that we are continuing to raise at the moment.
	I am believe that I am very close to the time when I will have to sit down, Madam Deputy Speaker. Thank you for your kind nod. The last thing that I wish to say is that I will certainly meet the families as soon as we possibly can. I will work with my hon. and learned Friend and the families, and with anyone else who wants to work with us, so that we do everything we can to see whether this prosecution is possible and, if it is not, to make sure that we protect other families’ loved ones when they put to sea on the high seas.
	Question put and agreed to.
	House adjourned.